Now, I do not propose to whitewash this enlightened but unscrupulous robber. On no recognized principles of morality can he be defended, any more than can Louis XIV. for the invasion of Flanders, or Frederic II. for the seizure of Silesia. He first resolved to seize Azof, the main port on the little sea of that name which opens out into the Black Sea, and which belonged to the Turks. It was undoubted robbery; but its possession would be an immense advantage to Russia. Of course, that seizure could not be justified either by the laws of God or the laws of nations. "Thou shalt not steal" is an eternally binding law for nations and for individuals. Peter knew that he had no right to this important city; but at the same time he knew that its possession would benefit Russia. So we are compelled to view this monarch as a robber, taking what was not his, as Ahab seized Naboth's vineyard; but taking it for the benefit of his country, which Ahab did not. He knew it was a political crime, but a crime to advance the civilization of his empire. The only great idea of his life was the welfare of his country, by any means. For his country he would sacrifice his character and public morality. Some might call this an exalted patriotism,--I call it unmitigated Jesuitism; which seems to have been the creed of politicians, and even of statesmen, for the last three hundred years. All that Peter thought of was the end; he cared nothing for the means. I wonder why Carlyle or Froude has not bolstered up and defended this great hyperborean giant for doing evil that good may come. Casuistry is in their line; the defence of scoundrels seems to be their vocation.
Well, then, bear in mind that Peter, feeling that he must have Azof for the good of Russia, irrespective of right or wrong, went straight forward to his end. Of course he knew he must have a fight with Turkey to gain this prize, and he prepared for such a fight. Turkey was not then what it is now,--ripe fruit to be gobbled up by Russia when the rest of Europe permits it; but Turkey then was a great power. At that very time two hundred thousand Turks were besieging Vienna, which would have fallen but for John Sobieski. But obstacles were nothing to Peter; they were simply things to be surmounted, at any sacrifice of time or money or men. So with the ships he had built he sailed down the River Don and attacked Azof. He was foiled, not beaten. He never seemed to know when he was beaten, and he never seemed to care. That hard, iron man marched to his object like a destiny. What he had to do was to take Azof against an army of Turks. So, having failed in the first campaign, through the treachery of one Jacobs who had been employed in the artillery, he tried it again the next year and succeeded, his army being commanded by General Gordon, a Scotchman, while he himself served only as ensign or lieutenant. This port was the key of Palus Maeotis, and opened to him the Black Sea, on which he resolved to establish a navy. He had now an army modelled after the European fashion, according to the suggestions of Lefort, whose regiment became the model of other regiments. Five thousand men were trained and commanded by General Gordon. Lefort raised another corps of twelve thousand, from the Streltzi chiefly. These were the forces, in conjunction with the navy, with which he reduced Azof. He now returns to Moscow, and receives the congratulations of the boyars, or nobles,--that class who owned the landed property of Russia and cultivated it by serfs. He made heavy contributions on these nobles, and also on the clergy,--for it takes money to carry on a war, and money he must have somehow.
These forced contributions and the changes which were made in the army were not beheld with complacency. The old guard, the Streltzi, were particularly disgusted. The various innovations were very unpopular, especially those made in reference to the dress of the new soldiers. The result of all these innovations and discontents was a conspiracy to take his life; which, however, was seasonably detected and severely punished.
An extraordinary purpose now seized the mind of the Czar, which was to travel in the various countries of Europe, and learn something more especially about ship-building, on which his heart was set. He also wished to study laws, institutions, sciences, and arts; and in order to study them effectually, he resolved to travel incognito. Hitherto he had not been represented in the European courts; so he appointed an embassy of extraordinary magnificence to proceed in the first instance to Holland, then the foremost mercantile state of Europe. The retinue consisted of four secretaries, at the head of whom was Lefort, twelve nobles, fifty guards, and other persons,--altogether to the number of two hundred. As they travelled through Prussia they were received with great distinction, and the whole journey seems to have been a Bacchanalian progress. There were nothing lout, fêtes and banquets to his honor, and the Russians proved to have great capacity for drinking. At Königsberg he left his semi-barbaric embassy to their revels, and proceeded rapidly and privately to Holland, hired a small room--kitchen and garret--for lodgings, and established himself as journeyman carpenter, with a resolute determination to learn the trade of a ship-carpenter. He dressed like a common carpenter, and lived like one, with great simplicity. When he was not at work in the dock-yard with his broad axe, he amused himself by sailing a yacht, dressed like a Dutch skipper, with a red jacket and white trousers. He was a marked personage, even had it not been known that he was the Czar,--a tall, robust, active man of twenty-five, with a fierce look and curling brown locks, free from all restraint, seeing but little of the ambassadors who had followed him, and passing his time with ship-builders and merchants, and adhering rigidly to all the regulations of the dock-yards. He spent nine months in this way at hard labor, and at the end of that time had mastered the art of ship-building in all its details, had acquired the Dutch language, and had seen what was worth seeing of Amsterdam,--showing an unbounded curiosity and indefatigable zeal, frequenting the markets and the shops, attending lectures in anatomy and surgery, learning even how to draw teeth; visiting museums and manufactories, holding intercourse with learned men, and making considerable proficiency in civil engineering and the science of fortification. Nothing escaped his eager inquiries. "Wat is dat?" was his perpetual exclamation. "He devoured every morsel of knowledge with unexampled voracity." Never was seen a man on this earth with a more devouring appetite for knowledge of every kind; storing up in his mind everything he saw, with a view of introducing improvements into Russia. To see this barbaric emperor thus going to school, and working with his own hands, insensible to heat and cold and weariness, with the single aim of benefiting his countrymen when he should return, is to me one of the most wonderful sights of history.
His chosen companion in these labors and visits and pleasures was also one of the most remarkable men of his age. His name was Mentchikof,--originally a seller of pies in the streets of Moscow, who attracted, by his beauty and brightness, the attention of General Lefort, and was made a page in his household, and was as such made known to the Czar, who took a fancy to him, and soon detected his great talents; so that he rose as rapidly as Joseph did in the court of Pharaoh, and became general, governor, prince, regent, with almost autocratic power. The whole subsequent reign of Peter, and of his successor, became identified with Prince Mentchikof, who was prime minister and grand vizier, and who forwarded all the schemes of his master with consummate ability.
After leaving Holland, Peter accepted an invitation of William III. to visit England, and thither he went with his embassy in royal ships, yet still affecting to travel as a private gentleman. He would accept no honors, no public receptions, no state banquets. He came to England, not to receive honors, but to add to his knowledge, and he wished to remain unfettered in his sight-seeing. In England, the same insatiable curiosity marked him as in Holland. He visits the dock-yards, and goes to the theatre and the opera, and holds interviews with Quakers and attends their meetings, as well as the churches of the Establishment. The country-houses of nobles, with their parks and gardens and hedges, filled him with admiration. He was also greatly struck with Greenwich Hospital, which looked to him like a royal palace (as it was originally), and he greatly wondered that the old seedy and frowsy pensioners should be lodged so magnificently. The courts of Westminster surprised him. "Why," said he, in reference to the legal gentlemen in wigs and gowns, "I have but two lawyers in my dominions, and one of them I mean to hang as soon as I return." But while he visited everything, generally in a quiet way, avoiding display and publicity, he was most interested in mechanical inventions and the dock-yards and mock naval combats. It would seem that his private life was simple, although he is accused of eating voraciously, and of drinking great quantities of brandy and sack. If this be true, he certainly reformed his habits, and learned to govern himself, for he was very temperate in his latter days. Men who are very active and perform herculean labors, do not generally belong to the class of gluttons or drunkards. I have read of but few great generals, like Caesar, or Charlemagne, or William III., or Gustavus Adolphus, or Marlborough, or Cromwell, or Turenne, or Wellington, or Napoleon, who were not temperate in their habits.
After leaving England, the Czar repaired to Vienna, via Holland, sending to Russia five hundred persons whom he took in his employ,--navy captains, pilots, surgeons, gunners, boat-builders, blacksmiths, and various other mechanics,--having an eye to the industrial development of his country; which was certainly better than driving out of his kingdom four hundred thousand honest people, as Louis XIV. did because they were Protestants. But Peter did not tarry long in Vienna, whose military establishments he came to study, being compelled to return hastily to Moscow to suppress a rebellion. He returned a much wiser man; I doubt if any person ever was more improved than he by his travels. What an example to tourists in these times! All travelling (except explorations) is a dissipation and waste of time unless self-improvement is the main object. Pleasure-seeking is the greatest vanity on this earth, for he who seeks pleasure never finds it; but it comes when it is a minor consideration.
The apprenticeship of Peter is now completed, and he enters more seriously upon those great labors which have given him an immortality. I am compelled to be brief in stating them.
The first thing he did, on his return, was finally to crush the Streltzi, who fomented treasons and were hostile to reform. He had wisely left General Gordon at Moscow with six thousand soldiers, disciplined after the European fashion. In abolishing the turbulent and prejudicial Streltzi, he is accused of great cruelties. He summarily executed or imprisoned some four thousand of them caught in acts of treason and rebellion, and drafted the rest into distant regiments. He may have been unnecessarily cruel, as critics have accused Oliver Cromwell of being in his treatment of the Irish. But, cruel or not, he got rid of troops he could not trust, and organized soldiers whom he could,--for he must have tools to work with if he would do his work. I neither praise nor condemn his mode of working; I seek to show how he performed his task.
After disbanding rebellious soldiers, he sought to make his army more efficient by changing the dress of the entire army. He did away with the long coat reaching to the heels, something like that which ladies wear in rainy days; and the drawers not unlike petticoats; and the long, bushy beards. He found more difficulty in making this reform than in taking Azof, although aided by Mentchikof, his favorite, fellow-traveller, and prime minister. He was not content with cutting off the beards of the soldiers and shortening their coats,--he wished to make private citizens do the same; but the uproar and discontent were so great that he was obliged to compromise the matter, and allow the citizens to wear their beards and robes on condition of a heavy tax, graded on ability to pay it. The only class he exempted from the tax were the clergy and the serfs.